The One With the Trans Person 

True

cosigning

its outrageously good

100%

I'd always make up someone called that in the wrestling games I grew up playing. Nothing to do with drag, but I must've got the name from this show and just not remembered that's where I'd heard it. She was a no-nonsense badass who wore a flat-cap and shorts and did lots of powerbombs, lol.

i'm happy to find fellow ross haters ❤

Both Ross and Rachael were just terrible but I definitely hated Rachel more. Their whole thing was the worst part of the show

The show is actually unwatchable because Ross has more than a second of screen time in any episode.

I actually like that interpretation ☺️

Since she was played by a cis woman, which is what they did when portraying a trans woman then, I assumed "daddy" transitioned at some point.

Same. It didnt read hard to me

Agreed. I've known several such individuals.

Came to say the same, especially in the 80s and 90s, some "boy" child with unexplained feelings could often end up in the gay drag community as the safe place for gender stuff, and only later figure out there's something going on beyond the immediate/surface obvious context of "gay man liking certain expressions". Chandler's trauma and shitty jokes around it all aside, Helena is quite accurate.

im not saying we were robbed but we were definitely robbed

Chandler is definitely bi, in my opinion. At the very least bi-curious

That Chandler Monica hooking up thing seemed forced to me anyway.

He is super straight

The same thing happened with Julian Basheer on DS9 and we were totally robbed

Gay and trans are different things.

@@gibbogibbogibbo its... a joke...

​@@gibbogibbogibbo Okay, you make a pun off of "trans" using a line from the theme song or of an iconic line from the show.

said this two times within the next 5 minutes after reading this lol

its never too late to be yourself!! hope you go well on your journey.

Just want to say congratulations!

The 90s also had a whole lot of “hey so the main thing gay and trans people do is get AIDS and die miserably by that or murder”. The very first movie I ever saw that featured queer people living happily was The Birdcage. (I turned out to be non-binary and wow three decades of confusion over “why do I hate being a woman but love the idea of being a drag queen” makes a lot more sense once you know there’s other options beyond just A or B!)

I'm 35. I have strongly felt like a man for as long as I can remember. I've kept it visually hidden because when I dress masculine I get threats and stuff. Hiding who you really are hurts so much. 90s media didn't help me other than solidify that I'd I were to be myself openly I'd be kicked at the very least. People in society solidified that if I expressed who I am openly I would be in danger. I'm just not brave enough to deal with that. I'm so happy that you're finally getting to live your truest self. I hope you finally feel like the person you want to be. You're inspiring and I hope the world gives you nothing but the best. 💜💜💜

@@lolafierling2154 Oh please, I'm not brave, I'm an absolute coward. I just couldn'tstand seing myself turn into a creepy old man in front of my own eyes. I'm not even out of the closet yet, my current plan is keep boymoding until I basically look like the butchest lesbian. (The picture is from a convention, don't count) Edit: I'm 32, may not be too late for you.

As someone who spent half their life so far (12 out of 22 years on this earth) having been a "body positive" transphobe, and is now learning more about myself and my relationship with gender (namely the fact I'm *_far_* from Cis): "Body Positivity" is just a destructive as transphobia, just instead of being systemic oppression, it encourages people to oppress themselves. In some ways it's not as bad, in others it's worse. In the case of transphobia, people spread disinformation about the transition process and its effects, as well as falsely claiming that children are forcibly transitioned on a systemic level. In short, transphobes claim being transgender is harmful when it actually isn't. "Body Positivity" meanwhile claims that being morbidly obese is just peachy keen, in spite of the fact that it _does_ cause immense physiological and psychological harm. I myself have not only witnessed it multiple times (even claiming a member of my family), but also _experienced it myself_. In short Body Positives claim that being fat isn't harmful when it most certainly is. I've lost 75 pounds in the last 12 months, and I'm still considered Obese at 280. I've been in the morbidly obese category. I still have the stretch marks, and with how long I let myself stay like that those marks will probably never heal. To be clear, I don't "hate fat people", nor do I fear them, nor am I averse to them. What I do hate are those who would try to take being fat and make it something to be proud of. *_ESPECIALLY_* when they themselves aren't fat, and never have been. If someone is fat, and wants to love themselves regardless, more power to them. But for people to try and erase the stigma associated with being fat, a stigma that serves to dissuade people from letting themselves go, I can't help but see it as being either despicable, or at the very least ignorant. A message to anyone out there that is morbidly obese and hates their body: don't let it discourage you, but don't give in to the "just be proud of it" crowd. I've seen too many people try and fail to find their footing in that mindset, saying it but not believing it. Look at your body and instead of thinking of it as what you _are,_ think of it as what you _have._ Think of it as the material which you can sculpt your true self out of. Once you get started, keep it going. You won't see results for a while, but once you do you won't want to stop. Believe you can be/look, if not exactly how you want, then at least somewhere close enough to it to be happy.

This is an interesting perspective. I’ve never been obese myself but am somewhat conflicted on this issue. I think it’s one thing to say that people shouldn’t encourage obesity, I know there’s people like that and that to me is body positivity gone too far. But at the same time if actual concern for a persons weight is replaced with mean bullying (as you see in Friends), I think that’s also a problem, and usually doesn’t help anyone lose weight

​@@KitKatHexe I'm sure people do push that message but that's not how I've ever viewed body positivity. It's about letting go of all the shame and guilt and self hatred and judgement. As with a disability, it can still be debilitating and a negative impact on people's lives, but those emotions attached to it can make it much much worse.

While it's obviously wrong, i think it's because it's Hollywood and it was the 90s and early 2000s, you have INTENSE diet culture and you have a wave of pushing for queer rights, it makes sense for that to have been the case. But, again, doesn't make it right.

​@@KitKatHexe I appreciate you going into detail about your journey. But that is not what body positivity is. Being proud of your body, and yes, your fat body just means having a general sense of pride in what your body does for you and finding joy. I myself had a weight-loss journey and it was the body neutral and body positive movement that helped me. When you hate yourself and want to unalive. I hadn't left my apartment for anything other than school for almost 2 years because I was so ashamed of how I looked. Seeing fat people be happy and free on the internet was what encouragement I needed to live my life no matter how I looked, to go to the gym and not care how others felt about me. It was hard but that shit saved my life. Body positivity isn't about promoting obesity. I will say there are some people that hold on to the far identity a bit too much and are unreasonable in what they showcase. However, I am a firm believer that going out, being happy and living ones life promotes mental and physical wellness that are associated with better outcomes. It's difficult to cultivate mental and physical wellness if you sit in your house all day, isolated, but, going out and living are going to be more powerful, positive forces than guilt and shame ever could. Now we have workout gear, clothing so many things that fat people can use to live healthy lives. For real, the pros of body positivity far out weigh the cons (pun intended).

Tbh, given the general thesis of this video, I found it a little odd that the commentary had nothing to say about how the moment was followed up with a(nother) joke at the expense of someone’s physical appearance.

​I don't really see that as a joke at their physical appearance, but rather "Helena is diverting a really emotional moment by pointing out the first obvious physical characteristic of someone in her audience, and it's funny how abruptly she's doing so"

@@stellasdoesstuff She is using it to distract, but she (the writers) turned to a physical characteristic that has been the long-standing subject of comedy. Same could be said for being substantially overweight. Honest question: If the first person she turned to had been black, Asian, or hugely overweight, and she’d referenced that, might you have considered that (I hate this word) ‘problematic’? Whether you recognise it or not, making fun of baldness (or losing hair, or attempts to disguise losing hair, such as with wigs or comb-overs) or making figures that are meant to be the butt of jokes bald or balding as a physical characteristic is an old comedy trope. I think it stems from cultural associations between baldness/losing hair and a lack of masculinity and/or the end of a man’s virility, as it’s typically related to aging. It’s less common these days, not least because more men and younger men accept it and lean into it (and look better for doing so), by having close crops or fully shaved heads, rather than trying to mask it. It doesn’t appear in comedy as much, because it’s old, tired writing. I just found it a bit lazy and jarring given what the scene and storyline was supposedly trying to say - and views and ways of thinking which this video was supposedly trying to critique. Anyhoo, this has been more commentary than I ever expected to make on the subject of baldness, so I’ll leave it there. 🙂

@Stewart as a bald guy, I found it funny and I laughed... *but* it is lookism and a joke at a man's expense. I'm fine as long as joking about other things is okay to then. I'm not okay with the hypocrisy of people shutting down jokes and free speech about them but who are okay about joking about others.

@@stellasdoesstuff it seems like Chandler's habit of trying to break awkward silence by stating obvious facts is inherited

But him being embarrassed about his father being a trans women aka being who she really is, isn’t on the same page as being embarrassed by the mother’s job

@@AleksandarBell no I know. But she said that like it was some deep hidden subtext when it’s just text. It’s like if was like “Idk if you can tell, but there are some clues in Friends that Rachel ran away from her marriage and that’s how she met the rest of the cast” when it’s literally what happened.

I remember ( have not seen the show in a while ) they most of Chandlers probalms where with his perent having a lot of other things going on .

@@AleksandarBell this is a misstatement though, come on. His problems with his mom don't have much to do with her job. Instead it has to do with her behavior, which he is embarrassed by and it boils down to who she is overall.

Agreed. Charles/Helena's is a BAD parent. The queers-ness never read to me as why Chandler had an issue. It was Charles fucking everything that moves.

This isn’t me hand waving all the harm that they’ve intentionally done, it’s just a small silver lining so that I can laugh instead of cry

Not to mention 'A-man-duhhhh!'

Chandler being uncomfortable with gay, queer or feminine things is always presented as an issue he has and it comes from his relationship with his parents. Friends despite the time it came out always had a very positive message when it comes to being comfortable with your feminine side as a man and it really thought me how to not stress about how manly I am growing up.

Chandler's mom had no redeeming qualities

She didn't mock or belittle Rachel's interest in writing, and albeit in a not very helpful way, could be viewed as encouraging Rachel's creative spirit. Admittedly, it's about as bright a point in her character as a single birthday candle stuck to the back of a playing card floating in the middle of the Pacific at midnight during a typhoon, but it's not nothing.

Fuck Nora Bing! Lol and also, that's rad. Very interesting (: thank you for sharing

Friends showing queer characters in long lasting relationships is more than most shows have done for us (including queer shows)... And that's depressing.

Lmfao 😂😂 totally forgot. Something about a pool boy, too hahaha. And Chandler used to be the second one from the left lmao

I talk about this all the time. Friends aged better even tho its older than himym in many ways I believe

The two biggest sitcoms after Friends, HIMYM and TBBT were both somehow way worse about trans people, gay people and race. Like yes, friends was absurdly white, but 10 years later so was HIMYM and TBBT made a mockery of the 1 main character of color

I watched HIMYM in its entirety last month for the first time and I was so astonished at all of the transphobic the show had, Like I genuinely couldn’t believe how many jokes they had directed to trans-women specifically at every single corner

@@alrightalrightalright6240FOR REAL like Friends didn't do great, but HIMYM is yeuchhhhhh

As someone who's watched maybe 1 ep of HIMYM, I'm kinda surprised that a younger show with Neil Patrick Harris did worse (at least from what you're saying)

Absolutely agreed, media kinda makes it seem like you can only be one level of minority and nothing else. It's so misleading and kinda stops personal exploration

That Will and Grace ep must've been important then! Too bad the reverse puppy episode Karen is bi and they won't take that away from me

THIS!!!! I’m an AFAB nonbinary person and some people genuinely think only AFAB people can be nonbinary because it’s the only kind of rep they see, so they think being nonbinary is a “girl thing” which makes NO sense and defeats the point entirely 💀💀

I feel this

@@xwormbonesx fr so many (cis) people view being nonbinary as being "woman-lite" 😭

happy that you were able to claw through all of that to find yourself. It took me a good 30 years for the egg to crack, and like you said- all of those decades of poor representation and survivalism had made it very difficult to peel back the layers of my masks and let the real me breathe.

@@hexonyou Thank you. It was 35 or so for me (puberty kicked in a little late and before that I was happy just thinking of myself as a kid rather than a boy) Happy for you too.

Yep, it's official, I have no idea what a girl is anymore

non binary is made up woke gibberish

Yeah there's a joke about him having walked in on them having a threesome when he was like, 7 or 8? Which is kinda yikes. The lack of boundaries from both his parents are apparent, especially his Mom. He probably extended that fact to his dad, though at the end of the day his dad was just being open about their identity and it was hard for Chandler to see the differences between those things

​@@stevielambert2552 Indeed. I'm all for sex-positivity and not keeping kids cloistered and ignorant, but that is a LOT.

Literally me

Same

I definitely think, alongside this 90s (and early 00s) conflation with queerness having to be feminine, that it also came with that era's constant battle with femininity in general. It was a big era for more girl/women charactrers showing up in kids media especially, but still constantly angling them to be carbon copies of the male counterpart (aka alvin and the chipmunks, or lola bunny) but with eyelashs and a dress, and/or just there as a love interest. And even when the girl characters weren't just there as love interests, they were usually only considered equal to the boys if they were capable AND hot. Growing up as a very masc cis girl, I HATED 'feminity' because it was marketed in such a way that I thought if I wasn't hot, i wasn't going to impress anyone or be appealing, so I leant even harder into masculinity and trying to be 'one of the boys'. Growing up, being a 'girly' girl or displaying femininity just tended to mean you were weak and were rarely taken seriously, which sucked. I'm glad old age and changing times has allowed this narrative to change, especially for us queer folk

Also not touched on, the "I get it, you're straight" waitress in the drag show clip was actual trans woman Alexis Arquette.

@@marblemunkey Interesting! I didn't realise

As someone who's seen Mork and Mindy, Fairchild has played those types a loooong time.

JOWLING KOWLING ROWLING LMAOOOOOO THATS GREAT

​@@lonk2026I just go with J.K. Umbridge, after that most hated of characters she's come to most resemble.

@@christopherb501 Loool

@J N it's a play on words, instead of "Viva las Vegas" like it usually is, it's "Viva las Gaygas" because Chandler's father is mega gay

@@Needwagon4Speedwagon A play on words is supposed to be clever and funny. That was neither ???

Why did I not know David and Alexis were related ☠️

Me too, growing up I was always scared of not seeming normal, so I laughed at everything I thought I was supposed to be laughing at. I ended up a big fan of things with horrible jokes in that I'd never be a fan of now, but hey I love the costumes and attention to detail and everything about everything besides the humour I don't usually get. My tastes started refining once I moved out and stopped having a television. Internet videos ask a lot more active choosing from you than a vague few channels. I started to realise I could have standards, and that it was okay to like one thing but not like another. God damn it took me a while. There is a social taboo nowadays (and perhaps longer into the past as well) around disliking humour, isn't there? Lots of people around who wrap their sense of quality up (plus that of others) in how able they are to find literally anything funny (and inoffensive). Such a desperation. I guess a lot of people go through it. Yeahhhh that was about the time I stopped watching South Park. Valuable lesson in the excuse of "we have a go at everyone equally" being both a] no excuse at all, and b] never really true anyway. I sat back and asked myself "why am I still watching this?" and didn't come up with an answer. Then I asked myself "hang on, why ARE they all kids? Why choose to set it like that?" and that was quite uncomfortable to be plain, thinking back on a whole bunch of moments. Viewership and "the done thing" starts off so automatic doesn't it?

When you think about it, laugh tracks were like "masking" cues, like an attempt at teaching (indoctrinating) people to know what was appropriate to laugh at, and what wasn't.

@@RedSaint83 I actually think they're a little underrated... they can work when they're done well, and a show dropping them can make it dramatically worse. But it's SO easy to misuse them in exactly the way you suggest.

If I remember correctly I think the manga might paint a more full picture🤔 But I believe it's just as Haruhi says, she doesnt care if people think shes a girl or a boy so she doesnt mind dressing up In dresses or pants

16 years on and I can't believe we still didn't get S2

Haruhi also uses “ore” which is a gender neutral pronoun in Japanese basically

This is largely me projecting, but as a gender-apathetic person who really only lives as a cis woman out of convenience, I saw more of that in Haruhi than what we may typically think of when we hear 'nonbinary.'

@@xwormbonesx is it?? Momentarily leaving aside the argument of whether anything can be truly gendered - ore is by and large used by men and masculine people and though it can be used by women etc my understanding was always that to do that is transgressive or rebellious in some way; granted I’m not a native speaker but it has never been presented to me as a gender neutral first person pronoun, but overwhelmingly is portrayed as masculine

I don't remember that do you have examples? This is sincere I'm not trying to be a dck

@@LK-my3wq It's been a while since I've seen the whole series myself, so I had to look some stuff up lol. Here's some examples: -Phoebe kissed Rachel to see if she was as a good of a kisser as Rachel said she was (S7 Ep20) -Phoebe considered asking out Monica & Ross' cousin since Phoebe isn't related to her (Chandler & Ross also found that cousin attractive) (S7 Ep19) -Phoebe implied she may have had a threesome w/ her friend, Mary Ellen (S9 Ep3) If you'd like to know more, I'd recommend nonmonosexualityinfandom's Tumblr post about it! :)

What I love is that the show validates this perspective, and doesn't portray Chandler's meanness positively. When Chandler complains about his dad (prior to meeting her), none of his friends join in, and if there's a joke it's about Chandler's fussiness. But what seals the deal is the moment when they reconcile, you know this is the happy conclusion of an emotional arc for Chandler. The show mocks Chandler's meanness and celebrates his kindness.

And the absolutely amazing Jessica Rabbit.

@@FTZPLTC Body Heat. Romancing the Stone.

@@HuntingViolets Personal favourite: The Man With Two Brains

Serial Mom

@@FTZPLTC Sue Collini.

Also, for some reason (maybe because I saw Friends after it ended and there was already a lot of discourse about it) I always saw Chandler’s dad as 100% a woman, definitely not a gay man who does drag… 🤷🏻‍♀️

@@ConstanzaRigazio probably because Kathleen Turner is a cisgender woman

Maybe this is me projecting some meaning that wasn’t meant to be there, but I first watched friends as a teenager in 2013 and it was always clear to me that Helena/Charles was a trans woman that first thought she was a gay drag queen and then realized her true identity. Maybe it was because I grew up in a different era than the show was made in, but that’s how I always interpreted it.

​@@EliVaz We didn't really think in those terms the same way in the 90s

@@EliVaz Yes, that’s also how I saw it.

I mean rarely anything is 100% bad? As also Lilly said in the video, there’s also some kind of progressive stuff in the show. For me it was one of rare experiences, though fictive, with lgbt+ people, otherwise I’m honestly scared how I would grow up in the conservative closed small environment where I was born. As a. kid I didnt pick up on all the offensive stuff

I would say that LGBT rights - and especially perceptions of gay and lesbian people - have come on massively and relatively quickly. I'm coming up on 40 and I can remember when a show having a gay character at all was rare, and would be cause for controversy regardless of how they were portrayed. As much as people can be derisive of comedic portrayals of queer folks as "not serious"... those were the ones that I think really helped. People can feel genuine attachment to fictional characters, and for a lot of people, the fictional gays on TV were the first ones they knew personally. It creates an attachment that made us harder to dehumanise. This, I think, is why the far-right get so tetchy about minorities getting media representation. They know it works.

@@hypatiakovalevskayasklodow9195 This is pretty much exactly what I said myself. I never even said it's bad.

Ross not being the worst about his expartners new gender,is progressive, not that deep, but still.

@@FTZPLTC Yeah, this has been it for me as a pansexual. All the representation is important, it humanizes and normalizes people.

Phoebe was _so_ a self-hating bisexual.

My interpretation has also been that Chandler's dad is a trans woman. Because a drag queen doesn't really dress in drag in her daily life, does she? Or do something like show up to his kids wedding in full drag unannounced. It was, too, her being played by a woman that made me all the more confused as well as convinced that's what she WAS, despite the show attempting to tell us otherwise through other character's reactions to and treatment of her. I am glad even just in retrospect to find out she really was intended to be trans, that they really just fucked up on it. Although the ramifications are bleak to think about, in a way I also feel (retroactively) seen, + hell yeah i was RIGHT this WHOLE TIME. I saw something there that really was there. From a certain angle I think it's also pretty inspiring, that she continued to be unapologetically herself even when her own family rejected her, didn't understand or intentionally disrespected who she was. That she did not let that deter or muffle her self-expression and just.. being. At least not that we, as the audience, could see. You could tell there was still love there, that Chandler even through his bitterness for what he perceives as his dad breaking up the family he did still appreciate [her] presence at the wedding and that the reconnection wasn't a disaster or wholly negative thing. It just was. And of course she cared for him and wished him well, even after all that time of him intentionally avoiding contact. Better late than never.. sort of.

hoping to move into overrated anytime soon

@Cio Lake and you are certainly entitled to that opinion

@Cio Lake what weird ant hill to die on

However I was hoping for a dream ballet at the end